As you may already have read in last week's news reports, UCSC has submitted its 2005 - 2020 Long-Range Development Plan (LRDP) and Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for consideration by the UC Regents at their meeting of September 19 - 21.
At that meeting, I will ask the Regents to approve my recommendation that the campus grow to no more than 19,500 students by the year 2020. Our current LRDP limits enrollment to 15,000, so the new number provides room for the campus to grow by up to 4,500 additional students by 2020 instead of the 6,000 students originally proposed last spring.
Even with this lower enrollment envelope, through careful planning and the judicious use of resources, I am convinced that UCSC will be able to meet our obligation to provide access and opportunity to future students. We also will be able to advance our academic aspirations, including expansion of graduate programs and graduate enrollments. Specifically, the possible growth of 4,500 students provides us with a realistic opportunity to achieve our campus goal of enrolling 15% of our overall student body as graduate students. When our LRDP envelope of growth is approved, we will have the opportunity to continue our campus discussions of the UCSC academic plan as well as how fast we want to expand our enrollments.
Last spring, the Academic Senate passed a resolution calling on the administration to delay submission of the LRDP until the Regents' meeting in November, unless the Senate Executive Committee endorsed a September submission. I strongly supported that resolution, and I am very gratified that the Senate Executive Committee (SEC) endorsed transmission of the plan and its accompanying Environmental Impact Report to the Regents for consideration at the September meeting. This agreement, which was reached in late August, is the result of close collaborations and information sharing between Senate leaders and campus administration, and I greatly appreciate the efforts of everyone involved.
The support of the SEC is critical, because delay in presenting our LRDP to the Regents would have cost us both money and lost opportunity. Delay also could have jeopardized important construction projects, such as the planned biomedical facility, funding for which is included in the education bond measure on the November ballot.
A news release announcing the availability of the final Long Range Development Plan is posted at http://news.ucsc.edu/2006/09/929.html
The complete documents are posted at http://lrdp.ucsc.edu, a link accessible from the UCSC homepage.
As you read the documents, you will see that UC Santa Cruz acknowledges the very real effects of our potential growth on the surrounding community -- and they also describe UCSC's obligation and promise to mitigate those effects of growth. The challenges we face can only be addressed by collaboration with our community. I am committed to working personally with local government officials and others to advance our mutual goals. I underscored that perspective in an opinion piece published on September 10 in the Santa Cruz Sentinel. (http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/archive/2006/September/10/edit/stories/02edit.htm)
In the same edition, the Sentinel published an editorial titled, "As we see it: Santa Cruz's own failures," which commented on how the City of Santa Cruz might have provided needed services for the city. (http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/archive/2006/September/10/edit/stories/01edit.htm) I invite you to read both of these articles.
In closing, I want to thank all of the many faculty, staff, students, alumni, and community members who contributed to our Long Range Development Plan process. I will report after September 21, on the outcome of the Regents deliberations.
As always, I welcome your comments and suggestions. Please feel free to e-mail me, using the link on my homepage (http://chancellor.ucsc.edu/)
